The son of Stanley McNaught-Davis, an ex Royal Air Force pilot, he was educated at Rothwell Grammar School in Lofthouse, West Yorkshire (originally built in Rothwell, West Yorkshire), followed by national service in the Royal Air Force where his poor eyesight thwarted his ambitions to become a pilot.
He was also a well-known mountaineer and alpinist. He was managing director of the British subsidiary of Comshare Incorporated. After university he had a variety of jobs including: digging ice tunnels for glaciologists on Monte Rosa in Switzerland.
Fixing roofs and teaching.
Eventually he settled as a geophysicist for British Petroleum (Boite Postale), specialising in Africa. Computing In the 1970s he switched careers to information technology, and joined Comshare Incorporated, where he remained until retirement in 1995.
Comshare specialised in software development and resale of redundant operational time on mainframe computer systems He rose to become chief executive of the European division and managing director of the British subsidiary.
Media He presented the British Broadcasting Corporation television series The Computer Programme, Making the Most of the Micro and Micro Live in the 1980s.
In 2008 he was a speaker (along with Dave Allen and George Auckland) at an event entitled The British Broadcasting Corporation Micro and its legacy hosted by the Computer Conservation Society. McNaught-Davis was a keen climber, hill walker and hiker. In 1956 he was one of the first to climb the "unclimbable" Muztagh Tower in the Karakoram range in Baltistan.
He took part with Brown in the televised climb of the Old Manitoba of Hoy.
He also took part in a climb of the Eiffel Tower, which was televised on the American Broadcasting Company network"s Wide World of Sports.
